Paula Skye Tallman is a Research Associate at The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and will join the Anthropology Department at Loyola University in Chicago this Fall. As a graduate student at Northwestern University, she conducted research on vulnerability and health among the Awajún of the northern Peruvian Amazon. In this project, Tallman found that Awajún community members suffered psychological distress from water insecurity, despite the fact that the Amazon rainforest is one of the wettest places on Earth.
Tallman continues to investigate the health impacts of water insecurity in her current project, funded by the British Academy, examining the relationship between water insecurity and gender-based violence in Indonesia and Peru. The team conducting this research was brought together through the HWISE network and includes Drs. Stroma Cole (UK), Gabriella Salmon (Peru), and Binahayati Rusyidi (Indonesia). Together, they are using mixed methods to examine whether women are at risk for violence as they struggle to obtain water to meet household obligations. They will use this data to chart paths to empower women in water management and policy-making globally.
More information about Paula Tallman and her research can be found at www.paulatallman.com
Selected publications (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=UdWSgUYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao)
Tallman PS, Pace C, Southgate T, Riley-Powell A, Valdés-Velásquez A, Salmón-Mulanovich G, Hartinger SM, Paz-Soldán VA. Ecosyndemics: The Potential Synergistic Health Impacts of Highways and Dams in the Amazon. Social Science and Medicine.
Tallman PS, Valdés-Velásquez A, Salmón-Mulanovich G, Riley-Powell A, Villafuerte LB, Hartinger SM, Paz-Soldán VA. A “cookbook” for vulnerability research. Frontiers in Public Health. 7 (352): 1-7
Tallman PS. Water insecurity and mental health in the Amazon: Economic and ecological drivers of distress. Economic Anthropology. 6 (2): 304-316
Tallman PS. “Now we live for the money”: Shifting markers of status, stress, and immune function in the Peruvian Amazon. Ethos. 46 (1): 134-157
Wali A, Alvira D, Tallman PS, Ravikumar R, Macedo M. Together we
can thrive: Linking well-being and conservation in the Amazon region of Peru. Ecology and Society. 22 (4):6
Tallman PS. The Index of Vulnerability: An anthropological method linking social-ecological systems to mental and physical health outcomes. Social Science and Medicine. 162: 68-78.